Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (602 page)

Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, a German born with the present century, who, to Teutonic imagination, sensibility, and humor, adds an amount of
esprit
that would make him brilliant among the most brilliant of Frenchmen.  True, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew; but he and his ancestors spent their youth in German air, and were reared on
Wurst
and
Sauerkraut
, so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an English bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable.  But whatever else he may be, Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age: no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art — who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the possibilities of German prose; and — in spite of all charges against him, true as well as false — a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men.  He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly-wrought sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest.  It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight in the other scale — that Heine’s magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal.  The audacity of his occasional coarseness
and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days.  Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach of immature minds, there is need of a friendly penknife to exercise a strict censorship.  Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor, and just thought.  It is apparently too often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage of being himself a man of
no
genius, so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous;
he
, forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in transcendent power.  We are also apt to measure what a gifted man has done by our arbitrary conception of what he might have done, rather than by a comparison of his actual doings with our own or those of other ordinary men.  We make ourselves overzealous agents of heaven, and demand that our brother should bring usurious interest for his five Talents, forgetting that it is less easy to manage five Talents than two.  Whatever benefit there may be in denouncing the evil, it is after all more edifying, and certainly more cheering, to appreciate the good.  Hence, in endeavoring to give our readers some account of Heine and his works, we shall not dwell lengthily on his failings; we shall not hold the candle up to dusty, vermin-haunted corners, but let the light fall as much as possible on the nobler and more attractive details.  Our sketch of Heine’s life, which has been drawn from various sources, will be free from everything like intrusive gossip, and will derive its coloring chiefly from the autobiographical hints and descriptions scattered through his own writings.  Those of our readers who happen to know nothing of Heine will in this way be making their acquaintance with the writer while they are learning the outline of his career.

We have said that Heine was born with the present century; but this statement is not precise, for we learn that, according to his certificate of baptism, he was born December 12th, 1799.  However, as he himself says, the important point is that he was born, and born on the banks of the Rhine, at Düsseldorf, where his father was a merchant.  In his “Reisebilder” he gives us some recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear old town where he spent his childhood, and of his schoolboy troubles there.  We shall quote from these in butterfly fashion, sipping a little nectar here and there, without regard to any strict order:

“I first saw the light on the banks of that lovely stream, where Folly grows on the green hills, and in autumn is plucked, pressed, poured into casks, and sent into foreign lands.  Believe me, I yesterday heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a bunch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. . . . Mon Dieu! if I had only such faith in me that I could remove mountains, the Johannisberg would be the very mountain I should send for wherever I might be; but as my faith is not so strong, imagination must help me, and it transports me at once to the lovely Rhine. . . . I am again a child, and playing with other children on the Schlossplatz, at Düsseldorf on the Rhine.  Yes, madam, there was I born; and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven cities — Schilda, Krähwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Dülken, Göttingen, and Schöppenstädt — should contend for the honor of being my birthplace.  Düsseldorf is a town on the Rhine; sixteen thousand men live there, and many hundred thousand men besides lie buried there. . . . . Among them, many of whom my mother says, that it would be better if they were still living; for example, my grandfather and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern and the young Herr von Geldern, both such celebrated doctors, who saved so many men from death, and yet must die themselves.  And the pious Ursula, who carried me in her arms when I was a child, also lies buried there and a rosebush grows on her grave; she loved the scent of roses so well in life, and her heart was pure rose-incense and goodness.  The knowing old Canon, too, lies buried there.  Heavens, what an object he looked when I last saw him! 
He was made up of nothing but mind and plasters
, and nevertheless studied day and night, as if he were alarmed lest the worms should find an idea too little in his head.  And the little William lies there, and for this I am to
blame.  We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, and were playing on that side of it where the Düssel flows between stone walls, and I said, ‘William, fetch out the kitten that has just fallen in’ — and merrily he went down on to the plank which lay across the brook, snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell in himself, and was dragged out dripping and dead. 
The kitten lived to a good old age
. . . . Princes in that day were not the tormented race as they are now; the crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew a nightcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peacefully slept the people at their feet; and when the people waked in the morning, they said, ‘Good morning, father!’ and the princes answered, ‘Good morning, dear children!’  But it was suddenly quite otherwise; for when we awoke one morning at Düsseldorf, and were ready to say, ‘Good morning, father!’ lo! the father was gone away; and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral disposition; and people glided along silently to the market, and read the long placard placed on the door of the Town Hall.  It was dismal weather; yet the lean tailor, Kilian, stood in his nankeen jacket which he usually wore only in the house, and his blue worsted stockings hung down so that his naked legs peeped out mournfully, and his thin lips trembled while he muttered the announcement to himself.  And an old soldier read rather louder, and at many a word a crystal tear trickled down to his brave old mustache.  I stood near him and wept in company, and asked him, ‘
Why we wept
?’  He answered, ‘The Elector has abdicated.’  And then he read again, and at the words, ‘for the long-manifested fidelity of my subjects,’ and ‘hereby set you free from your allegiance,’ he wept more than ever.  It is strangely touching to see an old man like that, with faded uniform and scarred face, weep so bitterly all of a sudden.  While we were reading, the electoral arms were taken down from the Town Hall; everything had such a desolate air, that it was as if an eclipse of the sun were expected. . . . I went home and wept, and wailed out, ‘The Elector has abdicated!’  In vain my mother took a world of trouble to explain the thing to me.  I knew what I knew; I was not to be persuaded, but went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world was at an end.”

The next morning, however, the sun rises as usual, and Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand Duke, whereupon there is a holiday at the public school, and Heinrich (or Harry, for that was his baptismal name, which he afterward had the
good taste to change), perched on the bronze horse of the Electoral statue, sees quite a different scene from yesterday’s:

“The next day the world was again all in order, and we had school as before, and things were got by heart as before — the Roman emperors, chronology, the nouns in
im
, the
verba irregularia
, Greek, Hebrew, geography, mental arithmetic! — heavens! my head is still dizzy with it — all must be learned by heart!  And a great deal of this came very conveniently for me in after life.  For if I had not known the Roman kings by heart, it would subsequently have been quite indifferent to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that they never really existed. . . . But oh! the trouble I had at school with the endless dates.  And with arithmetic it was still worse.  What I understood best was subtraction, for that has a very practical rule: ‘Four can’t be taken from three, therefore I must borrow one.’  But I advise every one in such a case to borrow a few extra pence, for no one can tell what may happen. . . . As for Latin, you have no idea, madam, what a complicated affair it is.  The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had first had to learn Latin.  Luckily for them, they already knew in their cradles what nouns have their accusative in
im
.  I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the sweat of my brow; nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I know them . . . and the fact that I have them at my finger-ends if I should ever happen to want them suddenly, affords me much inward repose and consolation in many troubled hours of life. . . . Of Greek I will not say a word, I should get too much irritated.  The monks in the Middle Ages were not so far wrong when they maintained that Greek was an invention of the devil.  God knows the suffering I endured over it. . . . With Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I had always a great liking for the Jews, though to this very hour they crucify my good name; but I could never get on so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much familiar intercourse with pawnbrokers, and in this way contracted many Jewish habits — for example, it wouldn’t go on Saturdays.”

Heine’s parents were apparently not wealthy, but his education was cared for by his uncle, Solomon Heine, a great banker in Hamburg, so that he had no early pecuniary disadvantages to struggle with.  He seems to have been very happy in his mother, who was not of Hebrew but of Teutonic blood; he often mentions her with reverence and affection, and in the
“Buch der Lieder” there are two exquisite sonnets addressed to her, which tell how his proud spirit was always subdued by the charm of her presence, and how her love was the home of his heart after restless weary ramblings:

“Wie mächtig auch mein stolzer Muth sich blähe, In deiner selig süssen, trauten Nahe Ergreift mich oft ein demuthvolles Zagen.

* * * * *

Und immer irrte ich naeh Liebe, immer Nach Liebe, doch die Liebe fand ich nimmer, Und kehrte um nach Hause, krank und trübe. Doch da bist du entgegen mir gekommen, Und ach! was da in deinem Aug’ geschwommen, Das war die süsse, langgesuchte Liebe.”

He was at first destined for a mercantile life, but Nature declared too strongly against this plan.  “God knows,” he has lately said in conversation with his brother, “I would willingly have become a banker, but I could never bring myself to that pass.  I very early discerned that bankers would one day be the rulers of the world.”  So commerce was at length given up for law, the study of which he began in 1819 at the University of Bonn.  He had already published some poems in the corner of a newspaper, and among them was one on Napoleon, the object of his youthful enthusiasm.  This poem, he says in a letter to St. Réné Taillandier, was written when he was only sixteen.  It is still to be found in the “Buch der Lieder” under the title “Die Grenadiere,” and it proves that even in its earliest efforts his genius showed a strongly specific character.

It will be easily imagined that the germs of poetry sprouted too vigorously in Heine’s brain for jurisprudence to find much room there.  Lectures on history and literature, we are told, were more diligently attended than lectures on law.  He had taken care, too, to furnish his trunk with abundant editions of the poets, and the poet he especially studied at that time was Byron.  At a later period, we find his taste taking another direction, for he writes, “Of all authors, Byron is precisely
the one who excites in me the most intolerable emotion; whereas Scott, in every one of his works, gladdens my heart, soothes, and invigorates me.”  Another indication of his bent in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, in which he attacked the Romantic school; and here also he went through that chicken-pox of authorship — the production of a tragedy.  Heine’s tragedy —
Almansor
— is, as might be expected, better than the majority of these youthful mistakes.  The tragic collision lies in the conflict between natural affection and the deadly hatred of religion and of race — in the sacrifice of youthful lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, Moslem and Christian.  Some of the situations are striking, and there are passages of considerable poetic merit; but the characters are little more than shadowy vehicles for the poetry, and there is a want of clearness and probability in the structure.  It was published two years later, in company with another tragedy, in one act, called
William Ratcliffe
, in which there is rather a feeble use of the Scotch second-sight after the manner of the Fate in the Greek tragedy.  We smile to find Heine saying of his tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon after their publication: “I know they will be terribly cut up, but I will confess to you in confidence that they are very good, better than my collection of poems, which are not worth a shot.”  Elsewhere he tells us, that when, after one of Paganini’s concerts, he was passionately complimenting the great master on his violin-playing.  Paganini interrupted him thus: “But how were you pleased with my
bows
?”